Q400 Plane crashes after 'unauthorized take-off' from SeaTac airport, officials say…

https://www.foxnews.com/travel/2018/08/11/jet-crashes-after-unauthorized-take-off-from-seatac-airport-officials-say.html

A Horizon Air passenger plane crashed on an island in Puget Sound Friday night, not long after a suspect conducted an "unauthorized take-off" from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Washington state, officials said.

Witnesses reported seeing a large plume of smoke in the air above Ketron Island after the plane went down. No passengers were believed to be aboard the Q400 aircraft, airport officials said.

No one on the sparsely inhabited island was believed to have been injured, the Pierce County Sheriff's Department said on Twitter.

The unidentified pilot was a 29-year-old "suicidal male," the sheriff's department said. The Seattle Times reported that he was a Horizon Air employee from Sumner, Wash.

The drama played out in real time on the Internet as the public was able to hear the suspect communicating with air traffic controllers via the air traffic control scanner.

"I've got a lot of people that care about me. It's going to disappoint them to hear that I did this. I would like to apologize to each and every one of them. Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess," the suspect said, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.